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It’s a particularly happy Monday here in my world, because I have carte blanche to knit a brand-spanking-new pattern with of one of the most divinely delicious yarns in the whole entire dang world.

I have a particular susceptibility to Little Cardigans — they’re basically my wardrobe Kryptonite. Up here in the Pacific Northwest, you never have weather that doesn’t call for A Little Cardigan. Rain? Fog? Damp? Sleet? It’s always handy to have one around to throw on. Plus, they’re the perfect thing to jazz up any underlayer, from a plain T-shirt to a me-made tunic in a cute print fabric. And – extra special bonus – no matter where you go in A Little Cardigan, you get to represent all of us as knitters.

So color me super-happy when Ysolda released Stockbridge: it’s pretty much the trifecta of cardis. Fingering-weight yarn: check. Knitted at a gauge that lets me finish it in this lifetime: check. Perfect excuse for super-cute buttons: check.

And color me even happier when Tina and Maggie chose “Grimm Green” for my colorway. (If left to my own devices, I might have picked YetAnotherGrey, but Tina intervened.) And Yaksi for my yarn … swoon.

Yaksi has a slightly toasted-oatmeal-y undertone to the base yarn, thanks to the yak fiber – so there’s color alchemy that happens when you order a colorway dyed onto this base. You get a rich, mellow warmth to the color that’s hard to describe… and when you’re staring at a color that’s so close to the middle between blue and green that you can’t hardly tell where one stops and the other starts, that’s pretty magical.

How much am I loving this knit? Here’s the tell: I swatched right when I got home from BlueMoonLand on the 23rd, swatched again on a larger needle to get gauge, blocked and dried those swatches – and cast on Friday morning. It’s now Monday, and I just had to wind my second skein, which means I’m officially more than a quarter of the way done with this sweater! Which makes me kind of wistful, actually. (Do you ever knit projects that you can’t bear to finish?)

Right now, it’s Monday afternoon and the rain is thrumming on the roof. If I play my cards right, I can brew another cup of tea, sneak away from my other responsibilities (new patterns? whaat?) and bliss out for just a few more minutes.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be up here in the corner, purring over my yarn!

Oh, and if you want to purr yourself, come find me at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival in a few weeks. I’ll be wandering the Market Friday through Sunday, and if I continue at this pace, I’ll be wearing my Stockbridge! Don’t be shy – c’mon up and ask to give me what I call a “Knitter’s Handshake.” (That’s where you lightly rub the recipient’s sweater sleeve and say “oooh.”)

Not coming to Madrona? Stockbridge and I will be happily ensconced in the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth at Stitches West in Santa Clara, CA the weekend after! We’ll have two booths of just the most delicious and tempting yarns and samples you ever did see … come say hi! (And if you bring chocolate, you’ll be our saving angels.)

Good morning dear knitters! It’s Saturday and my dear friend Karen is here and we have all kinds of fun planned. I have been looking forward to this visit for weeks and then…I woke up this am with a bit of a sore throat and the sniffles.

Ugh!!

So I am not a happy camper! I have my tea and my ginseng and other such immune boosters and I am going to continue on as planned.

Did ya see the purples??

It so funny this purple kick I am on. As a colorist of course I love all color since they are my medium of artistic expression. Personally purple is not my absolute favorite hue so this obsession is interesting. I got inspired by Pantone’s color of the year, Ultra-Violet. I like the shade of violet they are using but I truly think that the addition of ultra as part of the description might be the inspirational culprit here. What makes a color ultra? How does one go abut making a color an ultra color? Is an ultra color a super power color?

So it’s a bit of a creative challenge and you know me… I do so love a creative challenge. Even if it is one that have totally made up based on my interpretation of a color description. It’s funny what inspires and challenges us.

Anyway here are a few of the colorways I have come up on my ultrafying color journey!! I have a bout 4 more that are shaded solids but I am tweaking them a bit so look for them next week. If you click on them and make them bigger you can see that some of them have a bit of a purple glow which is what I think might make a color just a little bit more.

Harold’s Purple Crayon

Kiss the girl

Ophelia

xoxoxo

Enchantress

Dark Side of Delerium

Running Out of Moonlight

My favorite of these is Echantress!! Seriously sexy!! Although the vibrancy of Harold’s Purple Crayon really makes me happy. I will keep you posted on my ultra color journey!

It is January 20th already. How?? So we are almost through our first month of our 18th year and almost at that super lunar wonderfulness!

What are you casting on with us on the 31st? We have so very many options. You can just do your very own thing in any of our yarns and colorways!

You can join in on our lunar monthly KAL where we take that’s month colorways and do a block of the moth type thing. We have two ideas on this one. You could join in on the log cabin KAL with the MDK and Fringe#fringeandfriendslogalong which looks to be all kinds of fun!! (Read more here from Karen) Or you can knit your very own square and at the end of the year you will have 13 blocks ( don’t forget that blue moon). to piece together for your very own lunar blanky. If you think about it what better way to cover oneself at night then with a woolly moon blanket.

Karen is going to join in on the log cabin fun and I think I am going to do a square a month because it truly appeals to me. Also it is about what my knit attention span is at the moment. You can choose you own pattern design for your square but I will post a few stitch pattern ideas that I think will go well with each months lunar hue.

One could also cast on the seriously wonderful scarf, Just a Phase! that Karen has designed us. It is written for three gauges Aran, Worsted and DK. She brought it with her this weekend so I could photograph it and OMG!!! you are so going to love this. You will be able to purchase said pattern on ravelry and pattern fish under akabini on the 30th of January. You want this scarf!! It makes a statement and is one of the coziest things I have ever wrapped around my neck.

Not that all of the above is not special but… this week we are featuring our long time yarn bestie ~ BFL SPORT on special as part of our anniversary celebration of who we are and where we have been!! Our BFL SPORT is the 2nd garment yarn that I added to our line of garment yarns. I love Bluefaced Leicester! As a dyer I am a fan of the way it takes the dye and color because of it’s long wool component. Then there is that little bit of drape it can have also due to it’s long-wool genetics. Bluefaced is a softer and bouncier long-wool especially if spun just right which I feel our BFL SPORT is. It has just enough twist to be durable and also lofty!

One of my absolute favorite sweaters was designed for me by my dear friend Anna Zilboorg. It’s called Tina’s Sweater and is knit with our BFL SPORT. It is the coziest sweater I own and has stood the test of time.

Boy, it’s a big month filled with lunacy over here in Camp Blue Moon… Blood Moons, Blue Moons, new colorways and all sorts of lunar madness!

The other week I was inspired by the #fringeandfriendslogalong and started a blanket for our little room up in the mountains:

But now Tina’s all on fire with new moon-y colorways, and we got to thinkin’… wouldn’t these progressive lunar phase colorways just make the most GORGEOUS Log Cabin blankets?

The Fringe Association Log-Cabin-along is a gently-organized free-for-all of Log Cabining: do you want to make a blanket? a coat? a pair of handwarmers? Yarn, colors, and scale of knitting is up to you: folks out there are doing all sorts of great stuff and tagging it with the #fringeandfriendslogalong hashtag. Post pictures of your progress on Instagram or Facebook or Ravelry… wherever your social media happy place(s) is/are!

Personally, I can’t wait to hang out down at BlueMoonLand this weekend and cast on a Lunar Madness blanket with these beauties. I’d start with the boldest, reddest color for the center square and then work out to grey from there. There are 4 colorways pictured above, so I might throw in a fifth so that my Log Cabin strips don’t stack up with one color on each side… or I might work from reddest to greyest and then back out again. So many possibilities!

Go check out the Fringe Association blog for all the details and then just see if you can resist the urge to cast on for your own moony project.…

Yeah I might be a little obsessed with all things lunar right now. Honestly it’s not a new thing for me. My first pet that I got to actually name all by myself I called Luna and basically my love affair with the moon has gone on from there.

So it just makes sense that starting a new year that is an pretty big anniversary year for us with a blue moon ~ that is a total lunar eclipse ~ a super moon and a blood moon would have me a bit inspired. We are calling it lunar madness in the barn!

Anyway I have been making so very many colorways which I will release through out the years as promised but this month is going to be heavy with them as I think it should with all of this lunar magic!

So here is what I’ve been working on. So far there are 4 of them. Starting at the bottom with the first one which is mostly shades of greys with light pops of speckles. That was is called Lunacy since full moons do tend to makes us all little free wheelin’ shall we say. Then we have the colorway I tried to fit all of the super blue blood eclipseness into. Of course it is called, Blue Super Eclipsed Blood Moon ( say that fast) . It was no small thing to get some of the phasing from dark to light and a little blue and then at dark blood moon color that happens with ths type of eclipse. I have seen one or two of these and they are stunningly impressive and…you do not need glasses to watch it.

Okay the third colorway in is called Total Lunar Eclipse and looks like the eclipse picture here. It’s very pretty and because of how the black and dark red and gold specks looked together I decided to go even darker with yet a another colorway and made the Dark Side of the Blue Moon. I love them all but this one has so much in it that you are just not going to see until you knit it up. I am going to dye a it in Plushy and start knitting as soon as I can!!

We are planning a cast on party for January 31st. We have a pattern that Karen Alfke designed that will be out very soon. She has knit the prototype in Plushy in our Total Eclipse of the Sun colorway and it is stunning!! Some of our Lunar ones will do display much the same!

Here is it blocking in at 6 feet long. I know…move over Lenny Kravitz here comes Karen Alfke and her Just a Phase of a scarf!

It’s super cool and who knows what this gem of a pattern will do with all of this colorful lunar madness of ours!!

This scarf took 2 skeins of Plushy. The pattern will also be graded for DK and Worsted weight yarns. I am totally using Plushy and might even be tempted to use 3 skeins and show Lenny what’s what!

Lunacy

Blue Super Eclipsed Blood Moon

Total Lunar Eclipse

Dark Side of the Blue Moon

These colorways will be up at some point today. Saturday Jan 13th! Our techis is a little swamped with life right now!

I also have another color obsession I am working on!

So stay tuned for some very violet inspired hues!!

I do hope you will join us in for our Lunar Madness Cast-On Party!

Be sure to read Karen’s Inspiration Monday for a year long KAL involving all 13 lunat colorway this year.

I do not know about you but my first week of 2018 has been pretty eventful. I started the week with a dental appt. which is a pretty terrifying experience for me. I had to have a crown. Which is what happens when you are scared to go to the dentist and you keep putting it off. I know better but there you have it.

I have found the very best dentist. Dr. Hura at Hillsboro Modern Dentistry. The whole office is just all kinds of awesome but he especially so. He is kind and gentle and explains things and gives me all the time I need. I scheduled this for the beginning of the year because I pretty much didn’t have much of a choice and…it felt good to start the year being brave.

Okay so…we have Vogue Knitting LIVE next week which pretty much kicks off the 2018 show season for us fiber folk. I hope it warms up a little before the end of next week.

Also a special Vogue colorway!! Teri wanted me to create a colorway that was inspired by the Strawberry Fields Memorial to John Lennon in Central Park.

Imagine Strawberry Fields our homage to John Lennon and a little hope, peace and love!

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Sock Club Sign-ups are going strong!! It is so going to be a magical year! I made most of the colorways for the year and the 2 I did yesterday made everyone in the barn over joyed so… . I am pretty tickled! Check out the Rockin’ Sock Club blog for a fun game we have started for the year!